Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Wondering If I'll Be Able to Decipher What He Means By His Yes

That's a screen shot from Talking Points Memo grabbed last night say 7:00, half a scroll down from the banner. Sorry for poor quality, but I'm a techtard. Still, notice: there are no accidents around here.

Think though, fellow pwoggles, as much as Corporate disdains us, think how much they disdain the cracker base, doubly-fucking the motherfuckers with a sell-out on economic principles while Hey Look! Legal Fags! on the other.

Hah, got you. They disdain us just as much, prove it daily as necessary, would and will fuck you over as blithely when needed.

Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

It's true, and they've a game tonight v the team that deliberately crippled Branko Boskovic, the dirtiest team, season in, season out, in Major Lame Soccer, so win please, for Branko, for the points, but mostly to win a goddamn home game.

When modern devices fail, it is our nature to reach back among the cures of our fathers. If those fail, there were fathers before them. We can reach back for centuries. Gwyon appreciated the extended hands of his people less and less as the months passed. The doctors refused him information, guarding the frail secrets of their failing magic as carefully as Zuni priests planting prayer sticks. And there was that hallowed tribal agreement among them never to admit one another's mistakes, which they called Ethics.

On the other, spiritual hand, the congregation breathed out stale prayers for the boy's recovery. But in the end they always gave their God full leave to do as He wished, to remove the lad if such were His sacred whim, loading the fever-stricken boy with the guilt in had taken them generations to accumulate. They called this Humility.

According to Culture Shock:A Guide to Customs and Etiquette
of Filipinos, when my husband says yes,
he could also mean one of the following:
a.) I don't know.b.) If you say so.c.) If it will please you.d.) I hope I have said yes unenthusiastically enoughfor you to realize I mean no.You can imagine the confusion
surrounding our movie dates, the laundry,
who will take out the garbage
and when. I remind him
I'm an American, that all has yeses sound alike to me.
I tell him here in America we have shrinks
who can help him to be less of a people-pleaser.
We have two-year-olds who love to scream "No!"
when they don't get their way. I tell him,
in America we have a popular book,When I Say No I Feel Guilty.
"Should I get you a copy?" I ask.
He says yes, but I think he means
"If it will please you," i.e. "I won't read it."
"I'm trying," I tell him, "but you have to try too."
"Yes," he says, then makes tampo,a sulking that the bookCulture Shock describes as
"subliminal hostility . . . withdrawal of customary cheerfulness
in the presence of the one who has displeased" him.
The book says it's up to me to make things all right,
"to restore goodwill, not by talking the problem out,
but by showing concern about the wounded person's
well-being." Forget it, I think, even though I know
if I'm not nice, tampo can quickly escalate into nagdadabog--
foot stomping, grumbling, the slamming
of doors. Instead of talking to my husband, I storm off
to talk to my porcelain Kwan Yin,
the Chinese goddess of mercy
that I bought on Canal Street years before
my husband and I started dating.
"The real Kwan Yin is in Manila,"
he tells me. "She's called Nuestra Señora de Guia.
Her Asian features prove Christianity
was in the Philippines before the Spanish arrived."
My husband's telling me this
tells me he's sorry. Kwan Yin seems to wink,
congratulating me--my short prayer worked.
"Will you love me forever?" I ask,
then study his lips, wondering if I'll be able to decipher
what he means by his yes.